Body-Tracking Multi-Sports Video Game Review: Kinect Sports

With the surprise runaway success of the Wii, thanks in large part to its pack-in title Wii Sports, Sony and Microsoft rushed to make their own motion-sensing technology. Sony released the Move, essentially its version of the Wii Remote. Microsoft, meanwhile, released a body-tracking camera known as the Kinect.

Microsoft deemed that Kinect needed its own sports compilation, so it tasked one of its subsidiaries with the project. The company that worked on Kinect Sports was the famed English video game developer Rare.

Kinect Sports contains several sports including bowling, boxing, soccer, table tennis, track-and-field, and volleyball. Track-and-field actually constitutes five separate events including discus throwing, hurdle jumping, javelin throwing, and long jumping.

As long as you have a lot of room that allows the Kinect to detect your entire body, all of the sports work well. That's the main drawback of any Kinect game. A lot of room is needed. It will be a struggle to get the game to detect the entire body in a small room, especially with furniture in the way. 

In this game, volleyball is my favorite, as it seems to be the event that works best even with only partial body-tracking. If I'm lucky enough to get it to detect my entire 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall frame, the other games are fun as well. Another drawback of the Kinect is that it has trouble detecting dark colors, so make sure you don't have on a dark outfit so that the sensor has the best chance to detect your body. Unfortunately, this trouble with dark colors also is seen with hair and even skin color. I have natural jet-black hair, and I have played many Kinect games with my hair completely cut off. People with dark skin tones have reported even worse issues, with Kinect not detecting them or cutting off entire body parts.

Kinect Sports is a fantastic showcase for Kinect. However, it also showcases the issues with the Kinect sensor. If you are tall or have a small living room space like me, most of the games aren't fun to play. Volleyball still works well with partial body tracking, but the rest, especially soccer and track-and-field, are unplayable. The Kinect also has problems detecting dark colors, which has been an issue for people with jet-black hair like me and has been even worse for people with dark skin tones. Kinect Sports is great when it works, but it is brought down by the limitations of the Kinect.

Final Verdict:
3½ out of 5

Arcade Table Tennis Game Mega Review: Pong

Pong wasn't the first video game nor was it the first arcade game, but it was the first game to jumpstart the craze that created the worldwide video game market.

Pong is not an original concept, both in the fact that it was simply a video game version of two-player table tennis, and also in the fact that the idea spawned from a May 1972 demonstration of video game table tennis created by Ralph Baer.

That demonstration of the ITL2000, a console better known as the Magnavox Odyssey, was attended by Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari. Bushnell took the general idea with him and tasked Allan Alcorn with developing a game based on what he witnessed.

Pong kept the basics of the square representing the ball, the middle line representing the net, and the score counter. However, Pong changed from Baer's Table Tennis in two main ways that arguably made the game more playable for mainstream audiences. Whereas in Table Tennis, the ball would be out when it went past the vertical gamespace, as in real-life Table Tennis, Pong would bounce the ball back, more akin to air hockey. In addition, Baer's game had the option to give the ball some English, which is slang for giving hitting the ball to give it a bit of a curve. Alcorn's Pong simply had the game bounce directly off the paddle.

Thus, this simple black and white game with a simple beep sound effect when the ball bounced, was tested as a coin-operated machine. It became a huge hit, leading to more arcade clones of Pong by Atari and other companies, a home console by Atari, home console versions of Atari's Pong clones, and even more console versions of Pong clones by other companies.

Today, Pong is not even a shred as impressive as it was when it was released. But, there is no denying that it made a mark not just on the video game industry, but in worldwide pop culture as a whole. It still can be fun to play in short bursts, as it's essentially black-and-white air hockey without the drag from the air, and air hockey never will become not fun.

Final Verdict:

3½ out of 5